A view from abroad

Thanks for reading this and everything, but shouldn't you be out
making babies for the motherland? Because, according to Dr Susan Bewley of St Thomas' in London, "Delaying having children is like russian roulette. If you win, you feel clever; but if you don't, you will regret it."

So that is what we've all been playing. I'd have thought russian roulette is what you're playing when you have sex with absolutely anyone on your 24th birthday in order to hit your optimum fertility patterns. And you'll feel clever? That's right, we overeducated women are too selfish to settle down, unless, of course, it makes us feel clever.

Hey, instead of calling slightly later motherhood an epidemic, why not look at solving the problems of the new society? Or, no, no, I've got it: why don't you stop educating women? Then we'd have nothing better to do.

Would bribery help? France is now offering €1,000 a month to encourage middle-class mothers to have more kids. I don't know how you pass the middle-class test, maybe it's the old guacamole/mushy peas thing again. (In France it is simple: if you are white, you are middle-class; if you are non-white, tough shit.) But if a country brimming with free childcare and tax breaks can't get its birthrate above 1.9 children, maybe it's time to say, "You know what, women, you're free to do what you want with your life, even if you aren't creating enough consumers."

Burn the witch! Sorry, bit late to the party as I thought there were serious things going on in the world rather than tearing a young woman to shreds and faking moral outrage about something not exactly unheard of all across the world since the dawn of time.

I'm sure Moss's daughter, for whom the newspapers' concern has been most in evidence, will do much better now her mother has lost several sources of income. I'm usually happy about hypocritical whipped-up moral frenzies, as they tend to mean there is not much going on in the world - "Model Takes Drugs to Avoid Thinking About Food, Sleep Safe in Your Beds" kind of thing. But this isn't the case here. It seems more personal, like a mass of people - well, a lot of female journalists - rising up, even as Moss emerges from her New York hotel looking as beautiful as ever, shouting, "Stop being so pretty! Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!"